A registered National Historic Landmark located in Ely, Nevada, the Nevada Northern Railway Museum (NNRY) maintains the original railway locomotives, rolling stock, track, passenger station and buildings that served the historic copper mining region of Central Nevada for over a century. As the best-preserved example of a standard-gauge short-line in North America, NNRY has received multiple tourism awards and has been featured in seven episodes of The History Channel show American Restorations.

After using Altru for six years, NNRY sought an integrated solution that better met their needs for ticketing, reservations, memberships, donations and merchandise sales, including reservations and discounts for multi-night lodging.

Selecting the right system would lay the groundwork for NNRY’s continued growth and success. NNRY selected Doubleknot.

Since implementing Doubleknot, NNRY reports:

A 400 percent increase in online donations with a donation request integrated into the checkout process

We frequently receive calls asking us to change an event configuration after the event has opened for registration. These changes can frustrate to your constituents and create challenges for data reporting.To avoid these issues, follow this general procedure to test your event before you make it open to the public:

Paste the event URL into a browser in which you are not logged in to Doubleknot.

Add two of each registrant type to the registration.

Continue the registration process. Be sure to complete each form for each registrant and for the overall registration to ensure that the right forms are being displayed at the right time.

When you reach the shopping cart, click any Fix It items that are displayed and enter the requested information.

If discounts can apply to this purchase, test every variation of the discount.

As you go through the process, ask the following questions:

Did I ask for the same information twice? For example, this can happen when you ask for name and contact information in the registrant attributes and on a form. (Use registrant attributes whenever you can to simplify registration for your visitors.)

Is there a form that should be assigned to the overall registration that’s actually assigned to each registrant?

Are any forms assigned to the wrong registrant type?

Are required forms and fields clearly marked as required?

Are optional forms clearly marked as not required?

Are the correct costs displayed?

Following these simple steps will result in a better experience for your customers and staff. And remember, Doubleknot will always provide a free review of your event configuration to make sure that it’s as easy and efficient for your customers as possible. (If you want to take advantage of our free event review, we need at least three days of advance notice. Contact us at doubleknot@doubleknot.com for more information or to request a review.)

Admission-based nonprofits are unique, with enterprise-level requirements for ticketing, registrations and reservations as well as nonprofit-only needs like fundraising and membership management.

But, most POS solutions are designed for the for-profit entertainment industry, and don’t easily support the additional ways that nonprofits generate revenue. If your ticketing, admissions and retail sales aren’t fully integrated with your membership, registrations, reservations and donations, you might face the following problems:

You have to configure everything in two systems: one for online purchases and one for payments at your site.

Fees may be higher. Generic payment solutions can have less favorable terms than the ones you’ve already negotiated.

Because payments are recorded in another database, you have to manually consolidate sales and registration information from different systems for accounting.

You can’t access purchases that a customer already made online, so you can’t update registrations or collect outstanding payments and have the information automatically updated in your records.

In addition, separate payment solutions fail to capture every constituent interaction in a single database for reporting and analytics.

To empower our clients to save time and money, Doubleknot offers Sales Station, a complete front-desk/front-gate/retail POS solution with support for industry-standard peripherals like ticket printers, receipt printers, scanners and more. With Doubleknot and Sales Station, you set up everything you offer to the public once, and it’s available for sale directly to customers through a web browser, or at your site at a Sales Station register.

And, the Sales Station mobile app for iOS delivers the flexibility of a mobile payment system with the power of our integrated database so you can sell and validate tickets, update registrations, collect donations and sell merchandise anywhere. The Sales Station app for iOS eliminates the need to set up an unrelated system for mobile sales, which saves money on processing fees as well as administrative time to set up and reconcile different systems.

So, no matter it’s purchased, every admission ticket, special event, camp and class registration, birthday party reservation, field trip, membership purchase or donation is recorded in a single integrated database with comprehensive analytics and reporting tools for a 360-view of your constituents.

With Doubleknot and Sales Station, you can:

Add easy-access buttons to the Sales Station screen for any event, reservation, membership, merchandise or donation

Add anything to a purchase (even if it’s not assigned to a button) with a few simple taps

Reduce wait time and speed admissions by using the Sales Station app on iPads and iPhones as a pop-up ticket or membership booth

Doubleknot now supports enhanced single-page donation forms that update the contents of the form based on what the user selects.

For example, if one donation level includes a T-shirt, options to select T-shirt size are displayed when the visitor selects this donation level. If the next donation level includes a T-shirt and a personalized tote bag, the page will display T-shirt options and tote bag options when a visitor selects that donation level.

Example: Page content changes depending on what the user selects (click image for a larger view)

NOTE: If your organization is using Programs to manage spring and summer camps, we strongly recommend that at least one person from your organization attend this webinar.

We’ve made several significant changes to the Programs module for 2017. In this webinar on Tuesday, January 10, 2017, we’ll discuss how to use the new features to make registration easier for your constituents and managing programs, sessions and session events easier for you and your staff.

For most nonprofits, summer programs are more than just a reliable revenue source: they’re one of the most effective ways you deliver your organization’s mission. The best camps build happy memories, instill positive values and help grow a new generation of supporters.

At Doubleknot, our goal is to minimize the administrative tasks of program management so you can focus on what really matters: delivering an excellent camp experience. So, we wrote an eBook called Seven Simple Strategies to Streamline Summer Programs, which offers strategies to make every aspect of camp administration—from communications to registration and all the way to check-in, check-out and end-of-season followups—easier for your families and more efficient for your staff.

Response to the eBook was so positive that we used it as the foundation for an educational webinar. We invite you to download the eBook or watch the video (or both!) and contact us at Doubleknot@doubleknot.com if you have any questions or suggestions.